SAN DIEGO—From its beginning in 1910, Kensington encouraged individuality. Today a
section of San Diego, but originally a separate community, its developers insisted that no house be the same as any other.

While other historic restrictions, such as a prohibition against selling a home to anyone other than a Caucasian, thankfully have been jettisoned, the continuing insistence on architectural uniqueness has enabled the nearly century-old neighborhood to maintain its reputation as one of urban San
Diego's most charming.

At 4440 Braeburn Road, there's a 20-room mansion called Beth Sarim (House of Ministers) that once was held in trust for such biblical personages as King David, Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jepthae, Joseph and Samuel.

The property was built in 1929 by Joseph Rutherford, the second leader of the Jehovah's Witnesses, and though he lived there until his death in 1941, it was always his expectation that the prophesied Battle of Armageddon would occur during his lifetime and these biblical figures would return to the Earth. That being the case, he built the house, complete with a third-floor
watchtower, to accommodate their return.

While King David and the others never took up habitation in Kensington, other, more modern-day Jews did settle in the neighborhood— some of them as individualistic as Kensington's houses.

An example is Sheriff Bill Kolender, who was 11 when he moved in 1946 with his parents,     Dave and Esther, and his sisters, Iris and Marlene, from Chicago to a home at 4885 Kensington Drive. He later became the first Jewish chief of police in San Diego's history and later still the first Jewish sheriff in the county's history.

Kolender said his father had been advised by doctors to move to San Diego to combat a bad case of asthma. David Kolender bought the home for $16,000, his son reported in wonderment. The same home, where the family no longer lives, is worth about $750,000, he said.

For Kolender, the change from an apartment building was momentous. When he moved to his first house, he found a big pepper tree in the back yard that he promptly converted into a boyhood treehouse.

"It was a great place to grow up," said Kolender. He said he attended a trio of patriotically-named schools— Benjamin Franklin Elementary, Woodrow Wilson Junior High and Herbert Hoover High— and was the first boy to have a bar mitzvah at Beth Jacob Congregation when that Orthodox synagogue was located a short distance from Kensington at 32nd and Myrtle Streets. The ceremony was officiated by Rabbi Baruch Stern.

The sheriff remembers that as a boy he explored a warren of caves dug by W. R. Young in 1916 from the palisades down to the canyon at what is today Montezuma Road and Fairmount Avenue. Kolender also recalled working after school for veterinarian Phillip Haims and for dentist Thomas H. Baumann.

Haims, serving in 1953 as president of the Kensington Park Business Association, led the successful but controversial drive to have the previously unincorporated area annexed into the City of San Diego. Baumann wrote a definitive reference work on the community, "Kensington-Talmadge, 1910-1997," which was used as a source for this article and is available at the Kensington Library.

Besides Kolender, other notable Jewish politicians who have lived in Kensington are Susan Golding, who became the city's first Jewish mayor, and Susan Davis, who is now a member of Congress.

Further illustrating Kensington individualism are Gloria and Bernard Rimland, who both grew up in Kensington and spent most of their adult lives there as well.

Before leaving in 1951 for Penn State University, where Bernard earned his doctorate in psychology, the couple was married by Rabbi Monroe Levens of Tifereth Israel Synagogue when the Conservative congregation was located close to Kensington at 30th and Howard Streets.

Known throughout the world as an authority on autism, Bernard Rimland heads the nonprofit Autism Research Institute at 4182 Adams Ave. Because of his expertise in the field, Rimland served as a consultant for the 1988 movie Rain Man, which starred Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise. Signed photos of the stars hang in his office.

The Rimlands' adult son, Mark, who is autistic, in some ways served as a model for the character portrayed by Dustin Hoffman. The movie greatly increased worldwide awareness of autism.

Bernard Rimland today is engaged in a campaign to warn parents that multiple-dose vaccinations of their young children could lead to autism. It is a relatively lonely campaign because thus far the federal Food and Drug Administration has been unconvinced by research that Rimland says shows that the mercury used as a preservative in vials of multiple-dose vaccinations is
far above tolerable limits for human beings, yet is routinely injected directly into the bloodstreams of infants.

Rimland said court suits in the United Kingdom and various states of the United States are proceeding in the hope that they will result in forcing drug companies to modify the vaccine products.

Gloria Rimland won distinction in 1985 as the first female president of Tifereth Israel Synagogue, a Conservative congregation, after it moved to its present site in San Carlos. Settled in Kensington shortly after her birth in 1930, Gloria lived on East Talmadge Drive, which, she explained, is separated by a canyon from the nearby community of Talmadge. The drive and the community were named for three sisters who acted in the silent movies: Norma, Natalie and Constance Talmadge.

Bernard moved to Kensington from Cleveland in 1940 when he was 12. As a friend of Gloria's brother, Eddie Alf, he used to think of Gloria as Eddie's pesky little sister. One day, Eddie was busy studying, so Bernard and Gloria walked together to restring his badminton racket, and they started dating afterward.

"Badminton was a big thing back in those days because both the national champion and the international champion were here in San Diego and practiced in Balboa Park," Gloria recalled. "The international champion, Dr. David G.Freeman, was such a character that in one game they took him off the course because he was destroying the dignity of the game. But he was so fun to
watch and he was very good about helping the young boys."

A. Marten Mendez, the national champion, used to play exhibition matches against Freeman.

The Rimlands remember many Jewish families that lived in the Kensington area, among them one branch of the Ratner family, who manufactured clothing; the Chenkins, who owned a fashionable dress shop for little girls, the Haimsohns, the Jacobsons, the Rivkins, the Shelleys, the Teachers and the Sarfans.

Heritage social columnist Linda Bennett grew up in Kensington as Linda Ackerman, daughter of Flo and Maurice Ackerman. Between 1951 and 1963, when her family moved to Del Cerro, she said, there were such other Jewish families in the neighborhood as those of Al Brooks, George Martin, Victor Schulman, Ozzie Raven, Hy Gendloff,  Earl Brodie, Jacob Wenig, Harry Mallen,
George Wixen, Carl Esenoff and the Wohls. "It was a lovely, insulated place, a very good community," she said. "Happy times, happy days."

When Tifereth Israel and Beth Jacob moved east to San Carlos and the San Diego State University area respectively, they were following congregants who already had moved east. Other families moved to La Jolla, where restrictions against Jewish settlement were ended on the demand of the incoming University of California.

Gloria Rimland said one reason why many Jewish people left charming Kensington was because the neighborhood schools — Franklin, Wilson and Hoover— were not considered up to the standards of newer schools.

Bucking the trend by moving to the Kensington area in the 1970s were Jerry and Florence Musicant. After having worked in the aerospace field in Riverside County, Musicant relocated to San Diego County for an engineering job with the Navy at Pt. Loma. Charmed by the architecture of the Pt. Loma area, he decided to find an area that looked similar but didn't have the dampness that bothered his wife Florence. His search led him and his young
family to Kensington.

Not long after arriving, Musicant learned that Rabbi Morton Cohn, former spiritual leader of Congregation Beth Israel, was starting a new Reform congregation called Temple Emanu-El, and that it was meeting about a mile and a half from Kensington in the Rolando Methodist Church. Musicant joined the temple, subsequently serving on its board. He also became active at the
54th Street Jewish Community Center.

Eventually, Temple Emanu-El moved to its present location in Del Cerro, and the 54th Street JCC's building was sold to the North Park Apostolic Church after the Lawrence Family JCC was started in La Jolla.

Musicant said he felt "let down" when the JCC moved to La Jolla, but like the Rimlands he remained in the Kensington area.

Today, Gloria Rimland said, families are moving back to Kensington, drawn by its charm and close-in location, obviating the necessity for a long commute.

Among the Jewish families that have moved into the neighborhood are Bernie and Heidi Blotner, who relocated from a tract home in San Carlos to a Georgian colonial in Kensington. Bernie is a stockbroker and Heidi is a community volunteer, her schedule including the delivery of meals to
shut-ins for Jewish Family Service.

The community, said Heidi, has a 1950s feel to it. "You walk your dog, people say 'hi' to one another, people look out for one another, there are community block parties," she said.

Also living in Kensington are Audrey and Dr. Karl Jacobs and their young sons, Gabriel and Jonah. Karl is a psychiatrist and Audrey operates a public relations consulting firm whose clients include the Soille San Diego Hebrew Day School.

When they were house-hunting 2 1/2 years ago,"we wanted to live in an urban community that is family-friendly, with lots of kids in the neighborhood," Audrey said. "Here we could walk to a playground and library, shop and be in a safe place that is centrally located."

Describing the area as ethnically mixed, Audrey Jacobs said she has welcomed non-Jewish neighbors for Shabbat and they "know about the blessings, the songs and the challah. ... The neighborhood kids help us hang fruit from the Sukkah. ... At Chanukah we put a menorah in the front window, so people know what night it is."

As might be expected of a community that puts the emphasis on individualism, Kensington "is fairly liberal, open minded and accepting," she said. "What you want to share about your culture, people are excited to learn."

"Kensington has tons of charm," agrees a colleague of hers in the public relations field, Jean Walcher of J. Walcher Communications at 4202 1/2 Adams Ave. "When I go into Starbucks in the morning, I see the same families with their tiny kids on the way to school, mothers having coffee and the kids having hot chocolate. It's a very interesting community, a little bit gay, a
little bit older, but mainly I think Yuppie."

Now that her agency has outgrown the space she has shared for 30 months with public relations specialist Sydnie Moore, Walcher has been looking for offices elsewhere, and may be headed for Mission Hills.

Needing new quarters is a sign of increasing success for Walcher, whose clients include movie producer Stu Segal, industrial designer Gad Shaanan and, on a pro bono basis, the Agency for Jewish Education. Even so, she said, she'll be sorry to leave Kensington because of its unique blend of charming architecture and people.